How do you train for MMA?

What does your MMA training consist of? Do you train grappling and striking separately or only together? What is the striking part like? How much bag work, kicking shields or focus mitt training? How much sparring? Do you spar boxing only sometimes or always with kicking and kneeing? Do you wear shin guards when sparring with lowkicks? When you train grappling and striking together, what gloves do you wear? How hard you go in sparring?

Well, personally, I train with different focuses. If I really want to work against strikes, I will pad up my hands, and we will take it to the clinch and takedown, and get right back up, so we can stay in that strking mode. Sometimes we just use hands, some times we use both hands and feet, sometimes I use only one kick, etc. And, sometimes we go 95%, and other times we go 35% but with the idea of working specific areas of our game. Train specifically to specifically improve. Other times, one guy will wear gloves and the other guy cannot strike at all. The gloved guy can hit his opp. all he wants, as hard as he wants, as often as he wants, and his opp. can do nothing but close the gap and take him down. It is good to work that evasiveness as a primary method sometimes, forcing you to concentrate on head movement. Head movement is VERY overlooked.

Most of the time, when practicing pure grappling, we go around 75%, but will drop it to 35% or so to allow the submissions to come easier in order to work the escapes and counters from them right away, but that is focusing on different aspects. Also, spend time on just working positions, with NO submisions. You can always pound the guy if you can just hold him, so work the holding part too.

I think, as far as conditioning, you need to hit the bag and work the focus mits on a regular basis period. You need to do that to develop power, speed, wind, become smooth, etc. And whatever you do, shadowbox. It is very overlooked. it will teach you to recover after you have missed, which, again, is overlooked.

As far as what kicks to use, that is up to you. Your thighs can take a beating, so train smart. focus on different things and develop different parts of your game. Then, every week or so, or even every other week, put it all together at about 75% or so and feel it out.

Gichoke can give you a lot better advice than this, though, so be sure to read his post too.

later,

Kickboxing and grappling.

I spar in several ways, one is submission grappling, one is just positional grappling, one just takedowns, one just kickboxing and finally I also spar including strikes and grappling. I mix it up cause if you do not seperate them then you will tend to not get better at your weaknesses. For example, if we do not do takedowns seperatly, then the guys with very strong bottom games will never develop effective takedowns.

I see bag work as something to do when you do not have someone to hold focus mitts for you, I usually do, so I hit the bag only twice a week.Focus mitts maybe three times, kicking shields twice, in all these only for 10 minutes of so, I have too much to train to beat it to death. And lately I have been sparring kickboxing every day, so I am getting lots of practice striking.

Varies, my next fight is against a guy I want to stand up with, so I am kickboxing sparring 7 days a week right now, and shall continue for another month.

Occasionally, but I punch much better than kick anyways, so even my kickboxing looks alot like boxing, with the rare odd legKICK, AND i ENCOURAGE OPPONENTS TO KICK ME TO TOUGHEN ME UP.(DAMN CAPSLOCK)

Yes, MOST OF THE TIME, BUT VERY THIN SMALL ONERS, so I still feel it quite a bit, and maybe 1 day a week I go with no shinguards, so I don't forget what it feels like. I hate the big thick shinguards that most thaiboxers use, they are too unrealistic.

We do it a few ways. One common one is to start with boxing gloves (12 ounce) that can be thrown off at anytime (standing or ground) if they come off you can then only palm strike , you may wanna slip em off to try for more control though.And elbows and knees are to the body only. Or we go the whole way with palms. Or we wear 5 ounce Vale Tudo gloves and can punch and grapple, but in this case CARE MUST BE TAKEN TO AVOID HARD BLOWS TO the middle part of YOUr OPPONENTS face, as those gloves are very hard and one shot will break a nose.

I vary it alot depending on my opponent. A couple guys in class and I kill each other, cause we can handle it. But with weaker guys or newer guys I let them come after me hard, but I go easier. VS my teacher (whos very big and very good all around) I go very hard, and he does too, but when he buckles me or gets me in a very bad position he lightens up til I get my head together. Still though, I boxed him yesterday and was knocked down twice and have two ugly black eyes. I normally dont train THAT hard, but I need to improve my stand-up alot very quickly.

Thanks a lot to Grappler240 and Gichoke for two very informative and helpful posts!

I really like the idea of having one gloved opponenent, and another that just tries to take him down. I will try that out.

I was recently told that I should do some more reaction drills. What kind of reaction drills do you do other than the 'slip a jab' drill?

we did this drill for over an hour monday night, and for the most part, toward the end, nobody was taking an kind of a beating. Everyone LOVED it.

what do you mean be reaction drills? Be a little more specific.

later,

The one I was referring to was a boxing drill where you try to jab at your partner and make contact with his forehead with your fingers. You don't use gloves and you do it open-handed. The other parter then turns around and does the same thing. It's a good way to practice weaving, parrying and head movement.

I was also introduced to one the other day where you try to slip a jab/cross and go inside for a body-blow combination, then switch off with your partner.

Do you ever drill like this?

yeah, but our slipping drills most often involve us clinching and going for some fort of takedown, or shooting under a technique or inside a kick or something. 'But we use the same boxing drills, just focused a little differently. I feel that, no matter how hard I hit a guy (and this is my judo talking here), if I can slam him to the pavement with full force, that is a far more effective fight ender than any punch.

Just my opinion, though.

Because he is 7-0, having beaten for good groundfighters by stalling in their guard.His stan-up is weak, mine is better, but he thinks my guard is good (true) and thinks I cant strike, so he will want to stand-up at first, and he is a very good wrestler, so I probably wont have the option of fighting on top.

But it is all academic cause he just pulled out of the fight. Same ole same ole.

My ground will never get much better,so beating it to death at this point, not only doesnt help much, but it doesnt give me a great workout anymore, my heart rate stays too low. I assure you that against most guys I want it on the ground, but against a Royler Gracie I sure wouldnt. You train to beat specific opponents.

He has a hellacious sprawl, and is big and strong, if I lock up with him he will slam me. Fine, whenm it happens, Ill deal with it, but until then I wanna rack up some points standing, cause I see our fight ending in decision. But as I said, it is off, so it doesnt matter now.

And now, you get the option of fighting a guy 20lbs bigger 'who wrestled a little bit.'

Right?